Felicis Ventures Stocks Up With $96 Million Fund

Aydin Senkut, founder of Felicis Ventures, speaks at a conference in 2012.

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Felicis Ventures, an early backer of fitness-tracking device maker Fitbit and “Angry Birds” game developer Rovio, said it raised an additional $96 million to invest in tech startups.

It’s the largest of four funds raised by Felicis since former Google executive Aydin Senkut founded the firm with just $4 million in 2006. The new fund includes three new limited partners – two of them endowments at Ivy League schools, Senkut said in an interview, without disclosing their names.

Senkut is among the most prominent in a pack of tech investors dubbed “super angels” because they invest less than venture-capital firms but more than most wealthy individual, or angel, investors. These lines are blurring, however — like other super angels, Felicis has grown larger and more structured, raised increasingly larger funds, added investing partners and taken the lead role on more deals.

As many large venture-capital firms shifted their capital to later-stage companies in recent years, a number of seed funds cropped up to take their place. The percentage of early stage funds represented about 71% of all funds raised in the first half of this year, compared with just over half a decade ago, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. The median fund size is rising too — now at more than $170 million compared with $122 million for all of last year, for those funds over $20 million.

Senkut is trying to prove that getting larger doesn’t have to mean losing his close connection with entrepreneurs. With the announcement of the new fund, Felicis pledged to always vote alongside company founders in situations where an issue is put to a shareholder vote.

“We’re sending a strong message that not only do we want to lead their deals but also that we will be fully aligned with them,” said Senkut, who is one of three partners.

Felicis, based in Palo Alto, Calif., has invested in 50 startups that were either acquired or sold shares in an initial public offering. Exits this year included Dropcam, which Google bought for $555 million in June; and CardSpring, purchased by Twitter last month for an undisclosed amount.

Senkut said he plans to invest more on emerging areas of high-tech, such as drones and artificial intelligence.

“We’re really excited about what we call frontier areas, which might seem fringe but have a good potential to become mainstream in the next few years,” he said.